The Works of Lord Byron Volume V Part 36

_Att._ Prince!

_Doge_. Say on.

_Att._ The ill.u.s.trious lady Foscari Requests an audience.

_Doge_. Bid her enter. Poor Marina!

[_Exit Attendant. The_ DOGE _remains in silence as before_.

_Enter MARINA_.

_Mar._ I have ventured, father, on Your privacy.

_Doge_. I have none from you, my child.

Command my time, when not commanded by The State.

_Mar._ I wished to speak to you of _him_.

_Doge_. Your husband? 50

_Mar._ And your son.

_Doge_. Proceed, my daughter!

_Mar._ I had obtained permission from "the Ten"

To attend my husband for a limited number Of hours.

_Doge_. You had so.

_Mar._ 'Tis revoked.

_Doge_. By whom?

_Mar._ "The Ten."--When we had reached "the Bridge of Sighs,"[51]

Which I prepared to pa.s.s with Foscari, The gloomy guardian of that pa.s.sage first Demurred: a messenger was sent back to "The Ten;"--but as the Court no longer sate, And no permission had been given in writing, I was thrust back, with the a.s.surance that 60 Until that high tribunal rea.s.sembled The dungeon walls must still divide us.

_Doge_. True, The form has been omitted in the haste With which the court adjourned; and till it meets, 'Tis dubious.

_Mar._ Till it meets! and when it meets, They'll torture him again; and he and I Must purchase by renewal of the rack The interview of husband and of wife, The holiest tie beneath the Heavens!--Oh G.o.d!

Dost thou see this?

_Doge_. Child--child----

_Mar._ (_abruptly_). Call _me_ not "child!" 70 You soon will have no children--you deserve none-- You, who can talk thus calmly of a son In circ.u.mstances which would call forth tears Of blood from Spartans! Though these did not weep Their boys who died in battle, is it written That they beheld them perish piecemeal, nor Stretched forth a hand to save them?

_Doge_. You behold me: I cannot weep--I would I could; but if Each white hair on this head were a young life, This ducal cap the Diadem of earth, 80 This ducal ring with which I wed the waves A talisman to still them--I'd give all For him.

_Mar._ With less he surely might be saved.

_Doge_. That answer only shows you know not Venice.

Alas! how should you? she knows not herself, In all her mystery. Hear me--they who aim At Foscari, aim no less at his father; The sire's destruction would not save the son; They work by different means to the same end, And that is--but they have not conquered yet. 90

_Mar._ But they have crushed.

_Doge_. Nor crushed as yet--I live.

_Mar._ And your son,--how long will he live?

_Doge_. I trust, For all that yet is past, as many years And happier than his father. The rash boy, With womanish impatience to return, Hath ruined all by that detected letter: A high crime, which I neither can deny Nor palliate, as parent or as Duke: Had he but borne a little, little longer His Candiote exile, I had hopes--he has quenched them-- 100 He must return.

_Mar._ To exile?

_Doge_. I have said it.

_Mar._ And can I not go with him?

_Doge_. You well know This prayer of yours was twice denied before By the a.s.sembled "Ten," and hardly now Will be accorded to a third request, Since aggravated errors on the part Of your Lord renders them still more austere.

_Mar._ Austere? Atrocious! The old human fiends, With one foot in the grave, with dim eyes, strange To tears save drops of dotage, with long white[bd] 110 And scanty hairs, and shaking hands, and heads As palsied as their hearts are hard, they counsel, Cabal, and put men's lives out, as if Life Were no more than the feelings long extinguished In their accursed bosoms.

_Doge_. You know not----

_Mar._ I do--I do--and so should you, methinks-- That these are demons: could it be else that Men, who have been of women born and suckled-- Who have loved, or talked at least of Love--have given Their hands in sacred vows--have danced their babes 120 Upon their knees, perhaps have mourned above them-- In pain, in peril, or in death--who are, Or were, at least in seeming, human, could Do as they have done by yours, and you yourself-- _You_, who abet them?

_Doge_. I forgive this, for You know not what you say.

_Mar._ _You_ know it well, And feel it nothing.

_Doge_. I have borne so much, That words have ceased to shake me.

_Mar._ Oh, no doubt!

You have seen your son's blood flow, and your flesh shook not; And after that, what are a woman's words? 130 No more than woman's tears, that they should shake you.

_Doge_. Woman, this clamorous grief of thine, I tell thee, Is no more in the balance weighed with that Which----but I pity thee, my poor Marina!

_Mar._ Pity my husband, or I cast it from me; Pity thy son! _Thou_ pity!--'tis a word Strange to thy heart--how came it on thy lips?

_Doge_. I must bear these reproaches, though they wrong me.

Couldst thou but read----

_Mar._ 'Tis not upon thy brow, Nor in thine eyes, nor in thine acts,--where then 140 Should I behold this sympathy? or shall?

_Doge_ (_pointing downwards_). There.

_Mar._ In the earth?

_Doge_. To which I am tending: when It lies upon this heart, far lightlier, though Loaded with marble, than the thoughts which press it Now, you will know me better.

_Mar._ Are you, then, Indeed, thus to be pitied?